


Safety Factor

by MyMisguidedFairytale



Series: light reading [6]
Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Blood and Gore, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Dark Continent Arc, F/M, Fight Club - Freeform, First Meetings, Manipulation, One Shot, PariCheadle, Pre-Canon, Spoilers, Violence, this is good y'all I promise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-27
Updated: 2019-04-27
Packaged: 2020-02-07 06:27:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18615004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MyMisguidedFairytale/pseuds/MyMisguidedFairytale
Summary: It’s a small club of people who are strong enough to injure a Zodiac. / Slight Pariston x Cheadle“He had you listed as his emergency contact,” the nurse tells her. She could leave. Sheshouldleave, but curiosity pins her to her chair and keeps her eyes on his injured face. She wants to know more than anything what has happened to him, and who has done it.





	Safety Factor

**Author's Note:**

> _Safety Factor_ was originally written and published on July 12, 2015 on [tumblr](https://cheadle-yorkshire.tumblr.com/post/123850416022/fanfiction-hunter-x-hunter-safety-factor).
> 
> Everything below is preserved as it was originally posted:
> 
> **Title** : Safety Factor  
>  **Word Count** : 3506 words  
>  **Pairing** : Pariston x Cheadle  
>  **Summary** : It’s a small club of people who are strong enough to injure a Zodiac.  
>  **A/N** : Takes place ~3 years pre-Chairman Election Arc. The story contains **spoilers** for the Dark Continent Arc and its characters.

_****_ ****

**_Safety Factor_ **

Cheadle gets the phone call a few minutes before midnight. She was fast asleep, but it’s the hospital on the other end, and in a groggy stupor she manages to dress herself and drives the short distance from her small house in an affluent neighborhood on the fringes of Swaldani City’s urban center to the hospital’s emergency center.

The bright fluorescent lights of the hospital are almost blinding after the darkness of the roads, and Cheadle blinks the sleep away from her eyes, blurry when the glasses slip down her nose, and chats with the nurse leading her to an open room at the very end of the hall.

“He had you listed as his emergency contact,” the nurse tells her. “It took us awhile to figure out who he even _was_ —he had no identification on him, save his Hunter License. We’ve patched him up—he’s in no danger, but we have no idea what actually happened to him.”

“Is he awake?” Cheadle asks as they approach the door.

“Not yet,” the nurse says. “Perhaps you can get some answers out of him when he does.”

With a sympathetic smile, the nurse leaves her to walk inside. There is only a single bed in the room, and Pariston Hill is tucked into it, nearly every visible inch of his upper body covered in snowy white bandages. His face is uncovered, but littered with cuts and bruises, and he sleeps with the ease of medication and exhaustion.

Cheadle approaches him slowly, holding out one gloved hand. She doesn’t touch him, instead sighing and dropping into a chair by the side of his bed. By the state of his injuries, he had been in real danger of bleeding out.

She could leave. She _should_ leave, but curiosity pins her to her chair and keeps her eyes on his injured face. She wants to know more than anything what has happened to him, and who has done it. It’s a small club of people who are strong enough to injure a Zodiac.

And she has only to wait for him to wake.

–

Pariston has the cab drop him off a half-mile away, just down the block from a bar he’s been known to frequent in the past. He doesn’t enter this time, pausing in front of the windows before continuing on his way. It’s early enough to be relatively uncrowded, but dark enough that the music has started up; he can hear the bass-line even from the curb, and steps away with a frown. Perhaps he’ll be able to stop by again on his way back. He settles his hands lightly in his pockets as he walks, crossing to a side street, and after a few minutes of walking the landscape changes, the buildings begin to grow grayer, the neighborhood harsher, and he glances around with the undeniable certainty that he looks completely out of place.

He would whistle, but he doesn’t want to attract any unsavory attention, not today. Normally he would relish in it—the opportunity to indulge his violence on a deserving target would lighten his mood before such an important meeting—but today he wants nothing to tie him back to this place.

His fingers curl around a piece of paper in his pocket. One block, then two, and he stands between two mid-rise buildings made of red brick stained darker by smoke and coated at the base with faded graffiti. Pariston almost has to double-check the businesscard with the address printed in basic black font. No logo, just the club’s name and the name of the man he is going to meet. The card disappears back into his jacket pocket, and he looks down the darkened alley, turning and slipping inside before the few people walking behind him even notice his disappearance.

The club should be towards the end of the alley; it’s place is marked only by the tall, broad-shouldered, sunglassed man in the black hooded jacket that places him as a bouncer. Pariston has to stifle a grin when a brief glance with _Gyo_ shows the man’s hefty aura. What a treat that could be.

He makes a show of stepping around a particularly obtrusive puddle, stumbling a little bit with a calculated, harmless abashment.

“Ah, hello!” He approaches the man, who squares his shoulders in front of the wide door he guards. Pariston has his entire performance prepared—he adjusts his posture to appear smaller, contemplates sniffling into a handkerchief, or pretending to have forgotten the business card that doubles as his entry pass. He doesn’t have to say anything further, or do anything at all, as the bouncer turns aside and opens the door with one broad hand, allowing him inside. The bouncer barely even looks at him, and it fills Pariston with a deep sense of unease.

“You’re expected inside,” the bouncer says. “Enjoy your evening.”

There is no further address, only a lengthy, knowing pause. The bouncer knows who he is, Pariston can tell. The other man could’ve given his name, or his new title. But he does neither, like it makes no difference here. Like it means nothing to him. It is both a crack in Pariston's temperament and a tick in his esteem.

Pariston gives him a sunny smile, trying to salvage the interaction and regain some sense of his lost power. “That’s not really up to me, now, is it?”

The bouncer’s expression does not even crack. “Nothing past these doors is up to you. And once you enter them, very little outside them will be, either.”

Pariston’s lips tick downward. So there is a brain behind this suit of muscle; his employer had picked him for that reason, for the bump in his prestige and his ego in having both the physically and mentally strong beneath his thumb. To keep his own body and mind sharp in their company. And he knows then that this man works directly for the one he is to meet and not for the club that currently houses him. So, this man enjoys playing these kind of games.

“He gives me little credit, then,” Pariston says softly, walking inside. He pauses in the doorway, in the splash of moonlight between the alley entrance and the darkened interior. “I excel at changing minds. And our goals are all the same. Aren’t they?”

The bouncer wants him on their side. Once the bouncer had spoken, Pariston had released the hold on his aura, letting it flow out and around him freely. It intimidates the bouncer, and that gives Pariston a wonderful rush of satisfaction.

He misses the bouncer’s response, entering the club to a deeper, pounding bass-line than any other club he would otherwise frequent. The floor is a dark wood with thin beams, polished to a mirror-like finish, reflecting the glow from sconces of hammered metal set high into walls covered with velvet for the texture and the sound insulation. Pariston gives it all an interested, cursory glance, his footsteps pausing as the door closes behind him. At the end of a long hallway he comes out onto the middle terrace of a three-tiered nightclub.

The lowest level is a sunken dance floor, covered with swaying bodies and lined with speakers and rotating lights. Pariston makes his way to the railing, giving the entire space a quick, inconspicuous once-over, memorizing each passageway, each black-suited figure standing in a shadowed recess, each patron or staff member who sticks out just a little too much. Then, he turns from the railing, crossing to a metal staircase to take him to the top level.

It’s quieter here, but only slightly; the music is dampened by both the height and the particular architecture of the space. A long bar stretches the entire length of the wall, set back just far enough to give a sense of intimacy while not ignoring the views of the dance floor and the middle tier, littered with smaller alcoves for seating and more private conversation.

Pariston approaches the bar, settling himself in-between two occupied chairs and signaling the bartender for a drink. He rests his arms on the glass bar-top—the glass is probably an inch thick, rippled in places, constructed like a shadowbox—and looks with some amusement at the hundreds of bullet casings displayed underneath like art.

The bar is backed with shelves of bottles and curtains in purple with a butter-yellow trim. It’s an interesting choice—most bars would have used mirrors, to make the space feel larger—and he could have used mirrors, to read the lips of the others seated around him, to watch his own back, to prepare for the arrival of his contact here.

“Hey, you gonna drink that?” It’s the woman seated to his right, her chin propped elegantly in one hand, her luminous eyes sweeping from him to the untouched whiskey set by his elbow.

He hadn’t even noticed when it was delivered. “Of course.” He lifts the glass, swirling it, raising it just enough to inhale the scent. It helps to keep his head clear, when the music and the bright lights all around him work overtime to cloud his mind. “I just don’t believe in rushing a good thing.”

She laughs, tilting her shoulders in his direction. The dress she’s wearing is crusted with sequins in a slightly darker purple than the fabric beneath them, and they catch the light with her every movement. It’s distracting, and doesn’t even have the benefit of being fashion-forward to make up for it.

“I see. When you’re done, would like like to buy me a drink?”

“That’s awfully forward of you,” he says. “You don’t know my name. You don’t know the first thing about me.” A pause, while he regards her again. “Would you like to guess?”

“Vice-Chairman, correct?” Her voice drips with condescension. “Congratulations on the promotion.”

He stills, then chuckles, covering his mouth with the back of one hand. It should have been obvious to him; with no drink of her own, it’s clear she had been waiting for someone. It seemed that his contact had spies everywhere. It’s almost flattering, the consideration they were giving him.

“Thank you!” She had not been the least bit sincere, and he is equally as deceitful in his cheery consideration. “But you may call me Mr. Hill.”

“Hmm.” She arches one perfectly groomed eyebrow, before reaching out and running one finger along the stripes of his suit jacket. “A black suit with gold stripes…or is it a gold one with black stripes?”

“Black suit,” he answers her.

“It matches your eyes.”

His shoulders shake from more silent laughter. “I _like_ you. What a shame your devotion to your employer cannot be swayed.” He watches her from the corner of his eyes, watches her pout and roll her eyes. Her employer has taught her very well indeed. Pariston hopes his interactions with that man are every bit as fulfilling as those with his subordinates have been so far.

“It cannot.” Her confirmation only gives him more information about the man he is to meet.

“When do I get to see him?” Pariston asks.

“He’s just finishing up.” She eyes his untouched whiskey, and when he gestures towards it she lifts the glass and takes a sip with a grateful sigh. “It shouldn’t take long at all.”

Pariston frowns at that; the bouncer had acted the same way, like there was some large piece of information about this man that he was missing, something that could only be obtained through a direct encounter.

Pariston waits for her to finish the drink before speaking, making sure her eyes do not stray from his. “Tell me about him.”

“What’s there to say? Tell me about your Chairman.” At his sudden pout, her mouth turns up in a wry smile. “Not so easy, is it?”

“So he is beyond words. Interesting.”

The woman pushes her chair back suddenly, standing and grasping the edge of the bar-top with both hands. In her heels, she is almost as tall as he is.

“You’re about to get your wish,” she says. “Let’s go.”

Pariston’s eyes widen. He can feel it, the strange spike in aura almost beneath their feet. She feels it too, it would seem. It fills him with an almost electric anticipation, and he reaches for the woman’s chair almost automatically, sliding it back into place and gripping the crushed velvet of the chair back, patterned in crisscrossed yellow and purple—like a target, he thinks belatedly—and follows the woman when she waves manicured fingers in his direction.

Pariston turns questioning eyes towards her as she leads the way down the stairs towards the dance floor.

“You don’t know anything about this club, do you?” she asks, keeping to the fringes of the dancers and pausing as the music grows too loud. It thuds in Pariston’s ears like a heartbeat.

“What should I know?” He knows the place has a less than stellar reputation, for all of the luxury in its finishes, the secrecy behind the place reeks of suspicion. He’s built his own career on turning a blind eye to these kinds of places, so it had barely occurred to him that it could be anything more than a cover for drugs or money laundering—something dangerous and illegal, to be sure, but nothing that could affect him.

“You’ll see,” she says, approaching another set of double doors, black and unremarkable save for the two sunglassed guards. She waves one hand and they open the doors; Pariston follows a pace behind her, his attention focused to a singularity. He doesn’t pay any notice to the plain, darkened hall, or the metal staircase, or the way the air seems to get cooler as the noise in the air rises to a fever pitch that rivals the booming bass of the club music.

They enter to what might have been a warehouse. A crowd gathers around a ring, painted into the concrete floor. At its center, two men stand, shirtless, in combat. One throws a punch, and Pariston can see the air rush around his fist. It connects with a sickening _crunch_ , and the other man goes down. Roaring, Beyond Netero turns to the crowd and raises his arms.

Seeing him in person like this, Pariston throws whatever doubt he’d had to the side. The physical resemblance is uncanny, but beyond that the sheer strength, the intensity shown by this man is every bit the same as the Chairman’s. 

Someone off to the side is collecting and exchanging money, but as the woman approaches the crowd parts and grows silent. It takes Pariston a moment to realize that they are all staring at him, and waiting.

Beyond takes slow, thudding steps towards him, holding open his large hands and booming, “My friend, Mr. Hill!”

The crowd roars, but Pariston does not step closer, letting Beyond walk to him. In the ring, two more men step forward, and a minute later another fight begins.

“I see why you wanted to meet here,” he says.

Beyond’s laugh, like the rest of him, is larger than life. “So this is my father’s right hand man. Can’t say I’m impressed.”

This, like all things, is a test. “Your father thinks differently.”

“And look where that’s gotten him,” Beyond says. He doesn’t seem to care about the boom of his voice, but as Pariston looks around, he sees very little to worry him—most of the others there are so focused on the fight, and most of the ones he can see have glassed eyes and uneven gaits. “He sits behind a desk when he should be leading mankind. When he should be returning us to that place beyond the ocean.”

Pariston gives just the right amount of respite. “On this we agree.”

“I am not so sure.” Behind him, the crowd roars as one man gets in a particularly rough punch. His opponent does not go down, however, and Pariston is struck once more at the sheer difference in class between those men and Beyond.

“If my words do not convince you, I am not sure what will.” Their correspondence has been the work of months of effort on Pariston’s part, ever since he learned of the other’s existence, and now that the last piece has fallen into place—their physical meeting—he will let nothing take the opportunity from him. “I have passed on all the information I have on the Association’s current proceedings.”

“You are quite the rat,” Beyond says. Pariston bristles at this, but holds his tongue. “But I don’t quite believe your…commitment. What is the Dark Continent to you?”

“My attraction to the project has little to do with the destination, that is true,” Pariston says, picking his words carefully. “As are my talents. I will create the political and legal conditions necessary to ensure the success of our voyage. Do you have anyone else who is so well-positioned, who excels at just the very skills you need? We will have the global platform such a quest deserves! Is that not just as important?”

Beyond clears his throat. “You’re boring me, Pariston. I don’t care about politics!”

“Of course.” He inclines his head.

“It’s been too long since I’ve fought someone.” Beyond looks over at the ring, where the bookie is paying out the winnings from the last fight. “Who’s up next?”

The man who won the last fight looks around, unwilling to volunteer. Beyond laughs and turns towards Pariston.

“I wish to fight you,” Beyond says. “I wish to test the strength of my father’s right hand. I want to see if it’s grown _soft_.”

Pariston stills, looking past Beyond, to the completely implacable expression on the woman’s face. She’d made herself comfortable in the front of the ring, taking the perfect vantage point.

“I wouldn’t bet on myself,” Pariston says, taking his hands from his pockets. “I’m afraid I would make for a poor match.”

Beyond claps Pariston’s back, forcing him a few steps towards the ring. “Fight me!” he bellows, raising his hands once more towards the crowd. They cheer as one for him, and Pariston watches as their regard towards him sinks into something icy and foreboding. 

He tries again. “I would really prefer—”

“Fight me!” Beyond adapts a starting pose, bending his knees. Around them, the crowd reforms into a circle, jeering as Pariston holds out his hands.

“Fight, rat! Fight or die!” He swings the first punch like a gale; Pariston dodges to the right, and just narrowly misses the next one from his opposite fist.

“You’re better than this, aren’t you?” The next punch connects to Pariston’s stomach and he collapses, coughing blood as the air is driven from his body. “Are you going to disappoint me again?”

He climbs to his feet, wiping the trail of blood at the corner of his mouth with the back of one hand. When the next punch comes, Pariston is too slow to dodge it completely, and it grazes the side of his arm, shattering the bone.

“Wipe that smile off your face!” Beyond punches him again, in the stomach, and Pariston wheezes laughter through the pain. There hadn’t even been any _Nen_ in that punch, and there isn’t any in the one that follows, impacting the right side of his chest.

Another giggle escapes him. “Your aim is off.”

Beyond’s expression freezes for only a second; Pariston wonders what such an expression might look like on the Chairman. “You’re right,” he finally says, and the next punch catches him in the face.

He can feel his lip split, but his nose is thankfully unbroken, and as Pariston staggers back he spits out a mouthful of blood.

Beyond stiffens again, and Pariston looks up, catching the _Gyo_ in his eyes. The moment he had dropped his own _Nen_ , so had Pariston—employing no defense, and he had just now realized it. The punches should have done far worse—they should have killed him, if not for Pariston so neatly manipulating him into dropping his _Nen_.

Roaring, Beyond punches him again, without _Nen_ , but this time he is aiming to hurt. The punches come faster, targeting his joints, his bones. Beyond looks at him—as if aware of the rage Pariston has instilled in him, as if he relishes in it—and punches Pariston hard, right in the sensitive spot high up on his chest where he’d been hit before. He doesn’t ask Pariston to fight anymore, merely knocks him around the ring to the cheers and jeers of the crowd, circling one another in a mockery of a real fight.

Pariston looks down at his chest and is almost shocked at the amount of blood there. He has only a moment to mourn his suit before the next attack comes. He attempts to sidestep it, staggering back on wobbly legs, but only succeeds in moving Beyond’s target from his sternum to his side.

A strangled sound leaves him, and for the first time he drops to his knees. His body feels sticky with blood, and the odd, warm feeling of it makes him laugh again. He rolls to his side when Beyond kicks him in the stomach, and Pariston looks up at him, his vision blurring. From this angle, he really could be the Chairman, fifty years earlier and that much stronger.

He thinks he blacks out for a moment there. The next thing Pariston knows, he’s being carried by two of the men from the fight club, supporting his weight from his underarms, one on each side. His legs dangle behind him, and he thinks he’s missing a shoe. He wants to tell them to stop, to go back for it, but he cannot muster anything other than a brief groan of pain. The men don’t stop, taking him through one squeaky door, then another, and the cold night air hits him in the face like a slap.

Then, he is thrown, and hits the wet pavement in an unceremonious heap. He hears the door close behind him, and although he tries to crawl forward, towards the noise and lights of the street, he can do no more than breathe.

–

His eyes crack open. It is so bright that for a moment he thinks he is back in that club, facing down punches, and suddenly a familiar face is in front of his.

“Glad to see you’re awake.” Cheadle moves to press a button by his bedside, to call for the nurse, but Pariston reaches for her arm, pushing it away. “What had you so panicked?”

“Nothing.” It is said with a wince, as he tests the stiffness of his facial muscles, running a tongue over his lips and grimacing at the taste of blood.

“Your heart monitor doesn’t lie,” Cheadle says. “Rat.”

She sounds far too smug about it. “You haven’t healed me,” he says, his self-assessment complete. “Will you?”

“Will you tell me what you were doing?” she counters.

“No.” He watches Cheadle’s subtle glances towards the heart monitor, now blithely even.

“Then I won’t heal you.”

Laughing hurts, but he doesn’t let it stop him, and lets out the smallest chuckle. “I’m sorry for the trouble.”

Her ears twitch. “No, you’re not. What were you thinking? Where _were_ you?”

His breathing shifts, the muscles in his jaw struggling to keep working even as his eyes grow heavy again and he can only look at her; the heart monitor speeds up as he chokes out only one word.

“…Beyond…”

The moment seems to stretch on forever as she waits for more, for some sudden clarity or understanding, but he has fallen back into unconsciousness and she has only that for her answer.

“He went somewhere _beyond_ ,” she repeats, slowly. She thinks of what that might mean, and where it could be, and stares between Pariston, softly breathing, and the steadiness of the machines around him, settling deeper into her chair and returning once more to the quiet of the night.

**Author's Note:**

> 1) The woman Pariston meets is supposed to be this member of Beyond’s expedition team. 
> 
> (She currently does not have a name, but I’ve been calling her Fantina in my head because she’s a dead ringer for that one Pokemon gym leader)
> 
> 2) _Safety Factor_ is the structural capacity of a system beyond the expected or actual amount; essentially, how much stronger the system is than it needs to be.
> 
> 3) Thank you for reading! I would appreciate and value your comments.


End file.
